Unison Hardware Security Verification Software

Product Definition

Introduction

Tortuga Logic’s Unison software augments Cadence Xcelium™, Mentor Questa-sim™, and Synopsys VCS™ to provide the ability to analyze information leakages during hardware/software interaction. The inputs to Unison include RTL, a set of security properties expressed in Tortuga Logic’s Sentinel rule set, and the testbench files that users are already running in their simulation environments. Because existing tests and simulation infrastructure are utilized, Unison can quickly augment a user’s existing simulation environment with no disruption to their current flow. Unison takes these inputs and creates a separate hardware design known as the Security Model Design, which is a set of monitors for the original RTL design. The Security Model Design is used to check the Sentinel security rules, and is discarded after, only being utilized for the security verification analysis.

Using Unison can greatly speed up your existing RTL security review while diminishing the risk of a hardware security vulnerability making its way to final system deployment.

Capabilities

Unison has a rich set of features to automate and assist current security review processes. Once simulations are complete, Unison then provides pass/fail results for each security vulnerability that was checked. Then, for any security vulnerabilities that are found, analysis information including custom waveforms and leakage path information to pinpoint the source of an identified leakage. The waveform displays signal values in addition to information leakage information that helps identify the source of the vulnerability and the signal values that caused the vulnerability to be identified.

Use Cases

SoC Access control verification

Red/Black Separation

Secure Boot sequence verification

Covert Timing Channels

Configuration register read/write protection

Encryption Key Leakage

Secure sharing of hardware resources

Verification of clearing secret content

JTAG disablement/Analysis

3rd Party/Vendor IPs and interface

Compatibility

A simulation platform is the only requisite to run Unison. Unison is compatible with Cadence Xcelium™, Mentor Questa-sim™, and Synopsys VCS™.